Nationals: A Quick Rundown

Wednesday: Fly into Sarasota with MIT alum Dave H. Dave and I go to the store, I buy food for my room, we check in, and then we find some food to eat. After that, we do a macc line on the beach. I am pretty terrible at anything that involves co-ordination, it isn't like I fail to comprehend which direction or which hand should brush the disc, it just gets to me and BAM! into the ground.

Oh well. I also threw on the beach some. The wind was really strong, so that is always good to get some touches in. At night, we ate lasagna that mccarthy and funboy (the harvard and tufts coach for you guys) made. It was awesome.

By the way, simple life lesson for the day. If you buy your ticket 4 or so months in advance like Emily did, the airline can change it's flight times and layover cities on you. You should check into that so you aren't in chicago for 3 hours flying to florida from boston.

Thursday: Wake up, go to the fields. As usual, dewy, flat, and level. We get start active warmups 1 hour before game time.

We play the Condors 1st. The have some athletes, and 2 good handlers. I covered some guy named Steve Dugan for a little this game. Apparently he has a big backhand (besides just being a really good handler), which people informed me of after the point in which I flashed over to the open-side on a no huck call, and then he bombed a beautiful backhand bomb upwind to a cutter in stride. After that, I tried to stay at home on his backhand, and when we forced backhand, I marked pretty flat and straight up.

I forced him out some, our zone was getting blocks, and our O line was in stride. We won pretty comfortably by 15-12. I think our O line got broken maybe 2 times in the last couple possessions to have the Condors make the game close.

Second game was against Bodhi. It is tough playing against some of your friends and old teammates, but I really thought it was best for everyone if we came out and played them as hard as we possibly could. I think we did. We won 15-8. They made some drops and throw aways, and our zone lines worked pretty well against them, except against Bill Stewart who cranked out a huge thumber over our cup. Somewhere Cy Prothro was smiling.

The third game was against Jam. They run a really pretty offense where everyone is a cutter, handler, and deep threat. Some people do it more than others, but it just seems like the flow positions more than other teams do. I guarded Gabe for most of the game, and I thought we had a pretty good battle. He is really fun to cover because he does everything, and he does everything well, so you have to always be on your toes ready for a deep strike after he was the dump, or a give-n-go, or some crazy off hand throws. We again win 15-12, but it felt close except for the fact that I don't think our O line was broken once (I might be wrong about this though... I don't really pay too much attention to our O line).

Friday:

With Thursday's performance, Ironside and Jam move up to the winners bracket. Bodhi and the Condors, who Bodhi "upset" dropped down to the losers bracket.

First game Friday, we play Goat. Ah Goat, how many times can we play them in the season? They are off playing their normal Goat game (which they do very well), which is small pass, small pass, pass to Hassell, bomb. This works 90% of the time. I believe we go down early in this game, and then our D line catches on fire. Think of Hassell as a cross between andrew and cody. baller.

At some point in the game one of our D cutters gets stagnant on the line and I realize I am making a double cut with Funboy and start to curl away when he throws it which my defender makes a fantastic layout for and hits the disc, unfortunately for him, I clap it at about the same time and then he hits my elbow with his still laying out body which not only knocks me forward, but I lose possession. I call foul, they flip out. I go to the observer, and he couldn't see it. Redo. I felt bad, but the play wasn't over after he hit it, he still hit my body.

I think I score a couple goals this game, including the game winner. I have been scoring goals all weekend which is weird since I handle and "should" be throwing them, but people seem generally disinterested in guarding the ole' upline cut.

The next game is against Sockeye. It starts out well, I think we go down a break maybe on the second O point (an O cutter gets hit with the disc on the pull!!!! Watch the disc! It can happen to you), but then the D line I am on gets the turn and I score. I am feeling good this game and finally throw a goal instead of scoring it, and feel very in control on Defense. They take half I think, and we are at 15-14 sockeye pulling and we turn it over. They score to make it 16-14 sockeye.

We find out that there was a lot of craziness that happened in the other pools, and that Bravo is playing the prequarters for the right to play Sockeye in the morning and we will play Ring of Fire in the morning. I am not sure what the weather will be like, but for some reason I think Ring would be more vulnerable to our zone than Bravo, so I like that draw.

I watch Brutesquad play the prequarters game. It was AWESOME not playing in the prequarters. You get unbelievably tired in that game.

They looked pretty good when I was watching, but Emily finally had succumbed to the "i broke my foot and could only aqua jog for 8 solid weeks before nationals" heat sickness and tiredness. Apparently she played great in the two games before that, so she was pretty content laying in the shade and trying to not spend the night in the hospital while watching her teammates clean up.

Saturday: Get up, get ready to play ring. I like playing ring. I played against their captain, jared inselmann all throughout college, and was his teammate on Rage. He is a great player and an even better teammate. I covered him for a lot of the game, but since our zones were working, we played a lot of zone. Everyone likes zone, except for the cup. I am the cup. The game was pretty contentious since we didn't have observers and there was a lot riding on this game.

Ring played a pretty physical game where they forced middle / clogged middle. Their strategy seemed to be to bump early in the count, and then back off. Unfortunately for them, when they backed off, they stopped being active on the mark, and their flat marks were very easy to break.

Both sides got a little chippy, and by the time observers came from god-knows-where, they were a welcome sign no matter how bad at observing they might be.

We won this game 15-11, and then got to sit around for a long time. I ate food, sat in the shade, and walked around if I got nervous. I also got my hamstrings and calves worked on by our PT guy. It was painfully awesome. He breathed some life into my legs.

The Semi's were next, and it was against Chain. We are 1 and 1 with them this year, and last year, they beat us in a very sketchy way on a botched observer ruling (play needed to stop, and they let it play on). We played a lot of zone on them. Even if we didn't score or get the turn, we made the point happen slowly. This was especially important because sometimes their D line would force a turn and then almost score, or we would score but they would be drapped all over us, and then the D line would go out there and throw zone and make them throw 100 passes, and by the time their D line was back out there, our O line was no longer feeling the pressure from the last point, and their D line had forgotten their intensity from the point before.

I think we take half on a huck to Colin Mahoney. The second half, we play a lot of man, and when we get the turn, the upline is open a lot. I don't know if this is a new trend in club teams, but they seem to leave the upline cut open a lot, especially when forcing backhand.

This might be an O's D thing since they can't fathom not having people that can't complete flick dumps out to space, but, with a strong crosswind, the upline throw was really easy compared to the dump out to space.

At one point I score on an upline cut, and in a moment of passion and idiocracy, I spike the disc next to my laid out defender (getting a TMF). It was a very assclown move, and about 2 minutes after it happened I felt like a complete assclown.

I rightfully got sat for a couple points after that to get my head back to get my head back in the game and to remind me that our goals for the season were to be the best team in the country and the best team to play against in the country. Not only did I let them down a little, but I also represent you guys as well as lehigh, and I don't want to be known as "that" douche.

We finished the game on D, with a huck from George Stubbs to Colin. I was running to give george a dump when I realized that he wasn't at all looking dump and just kept on running down field to see if I could catch some swill.

Sunday: My normal Saturday night routine at nationals is normally a blur, and I wake up with two sprained ankles. This saturday night, I went to eat with my condo mates, we talked about Sunday, we bought food for the morning, and we cleaned the condo to be ready to check out.

Oh, and we took ice baths. Well, at least Colin and I did. Kevin and Brent were too pansy. Refreshing isn't the word for it. My left calf was cramping all night before the bath, and it helped some.

Sunday we got to the fields and were the first people there. Then Jam showed up. We all throw around, do active warmups, breakmark drill, hucking drill, O vs. D endzone drills, and then we get our game faces on.

I was pretty pumped for this game. I thought I played Gabe pretty well on Thursday and was looking forward to the rematch, but he apparently hurt his hamstring something fierce and could not play today. That was unfortunate.

The game started out pretty well, and then Jam got a break. The first D point, we got a turn, worked it down about 60 yards, and then seigs threw a swing pass a little too far for me to get. I sprinted as hard as I could, and layed out pretty strong, but it dinked off my finger tips and I slammed my face into the ground hard enough for my ears to ring. Jam promptly scores.

In the first half, we get another turn on a Damien Scott dropped pass in the zone. We move the disc up to about midfield, and I am actually cutting downfield because we were fast breaking. I then find myself poached off of, and curl back towards the disc. I set up as the dump to get the swing, and the disc hooks on funboy's finger and knifes into the ground for another missed opportunity on D. crap. What is promising though is the fact that the D line seems to be getting turns fairly readily, and when we have the disc moving, Jam's O line seems to not want to run with us.

Unfortunately our O line is not playing as clean as we have been all tourney. Jeff is hurt from the Chain game when he was tackled at least twice on fairly late hits, and Jam is putting good pressure on our handlers to have to work to reset the disc.

I think they take half 8-6. At some point, we get a break on a huck to kevin to pull within 1 or 2. We have multiple chances to score on D now, but we are being hesitant and not fast breaking at all. We instead are cautiously walking to the disc, and we seem to be stranding the throwers.

At 12-11 Jam, we get a turn off of a George Stubbs layout. I have been covering Damien Scott this point, and I am the front of the stack (the dump). Seigs wants to get it off line, and decides to throw it quickly to me just as I am getting ready to cut for an I/O from him. It picks up a in the wind, and unfortunately for me Damien is about 6 inches taller than me and I see his hands reach over my head as I am jumping and reaching up for it, and he just comes to the disc smacking it out of the way before it is even in my catching wheelhouse. I then get bowled over by him only to get up and see them scoring on a fast break. In hindsight, I should have called a foul to stop the fast break (he cleanly d'ed it, and I had no chance of catching it after before he hit me), but him knocking me down prevented me from helping out seigs who was caught in a 2 on 1 situation.

Damn. 13-11. I think we must turn it 2 times on O to lose the game then. It all went by so fast, but I am glad that it was a very clean and very fast paced game with not many calls at all. I think this game will actually be watchable.

The game seemed sort of surreal. I didn't feel nervous at all playing it, and I thought we were playing well, but we just weren't clicking as team; that is for both the O and the D lines.

After the game and the awards ceremony, I went over with emily and we looked at the UPA trophy. It only motivated me more to get ready for next year. Pretty soon I am going to write down my list of goals so that next year, it will be ironside that wins.

So that ends my club season, so I guess that means I have to start coaching you guys. Let's make it a good year.

-josh

Guest Topic: Catching

I have invited one of the best people I have coached to write about catching. When I say best, I by no means imply the most athletic. I mean it strictly on a coachability and student of the game standpoint.

Pete makes up for being, um, being dealt the short, squat card in life for having a great mind for the game, and for learning how to milk every bit of his athleticism out of his body. He definitely isn't the quickest or fastest on the field, but he rarely gets blown up on an in cut because he shields the disc well and catches the disc fully out in front of him.

It is a great read.

Claw Catching: It’s Ergonomic

The purpose of ultimate is to score goals, by passing and passing alone. Passing is throws and catches. The "best practice" of catches is the claw catch. Let us set that aside momentarily and slam down the basics of catching.

Circumstances will require receivers to make plays by whatever means are necessary. It is correct to catch the disc however you can. It is wrong to habitually use bad form. In general these rules apply. First, two hands all the time; be professional. Second, run through the disc. Never slow down to catch a disc. Slowing down before possessing the disc is how defenders run past or layout and get blocks on you. Think about running through the disc like this - your fastest stride should be the one immediately after the catch. This guarantees that you are moving as fast as possible and have reduced to a minimum the defender's efforts and window to break-up this pass. Third, greet the disc. Do not stab, slap, smack, or punch the disc. Do not wait for the disc to come to you. Catch the disc firmly with the whole of your hands. Fourth, watch disc while catching it. This basic rule of all sports is as deadly as it is simple. Taking your eye off the disc will cause you to drop it; not every time, but every time you do lose it it's a soft turnover - a stupid, preventable drop that fucked the team

The claw catch, put bluntly, is the way Frankenstein's monster would play ultimate. However, please promise to play with the athleticism, coordination, fluidity, and grace that Mary Shelley's classic monster cannot summon. What follows are the basics. Form your hands like sock puppets - fingers together, thumb opposite them forming a 'C'. Fully extend your arms away from the body at chest height. Catch the disc in front of your chest keeping your thumbs down. If the disc is below your chest bend your knees and drop your hips to keep the disc in front of your body. When the disc is too low to catch like this, flip your hands such that your thumb is up and your fingers are down. If the disc is in danger of hitting the ground either layout or baseball slide with your thumbs up to meet the disc before a turnover. Claw catching is the best catching form because it is aggressive and fast. Aggressive and fast makes good ultimate.

Aggressive: Attack the disc and keep it away from the defender. Shoot both hands out and snare the disc at the earliest possible moment at the point furthest from your man. When claw-catching, I end up with the disc, snug in both hands, facing the path it flew; in shooting out and grabbing the disc, my wrists rotate through the catch and point the disc's edge towards the ground. Claw catching is ergonomic. The disc fits right into the padded palm, the fingers mold to the disc's face, the thumb latches onto the rim. Fast: the claw catch's form keeps you moving fast and prevents you from slowing down. Proper sprinting requires a runner to pump his arms, adding momentum. The claw catch extends one's arms forward to make the catch. This is close to proper sprint form and is an easy motion/transition in a full sprint. Keeping your arms forward moves your center of gravity forward. All human motion is essentially a controlled fall. The claw catch helps keep the body moving forward.

A word on clap catching: Clap (or pancake or alligator) catching is a good way to catch a disc, especially in wind. In wind, clap catching is the superior catching form. When cutting, however, the clap catch suffers. First, the clap catch is close to the receiver's body. This decreases the distance between the defender and the disc, and increases the chance of a block. Second, my considered and corroborated observation is that almost all receivers slow down to clap catch. Receivers perform a hop a half-step before clap catching. This hop steals that last step's push from impelling the receiver toward the disc and spends its energy on a slowing hiccup to make the mechanics and position of the clap catch a little easier. The claw catch improves upon the clap catch by making the receiver faster, increasing the distance between defender and disc, and catching the disc earlier in its flight If you have any questions, thoughts, barbs, or criticism please leave them in the comments. My thanks to Will Hall, as told by Josh, for the title.

Pete

October 28, 2008

Trust

I have the unique opportunity this year to play on a team with 25 ballers on it. Top to bottom, bottom to top, we are all solid players. What makes us even better though, is the ability to trust each other and utilize each player to the fullest.

College is a little different because you have players at various stages of development playing on the same field together. You have the club calibre kid playing with the kid who learned a forehand 2 weeks ago and has shakey at best catches. I am going to try to make it my mission this year to utilize each and every player this year to maximize our ability as a TEAM.

This task also falls on the shoulders of the veterans on the team. By my 4th year at lehigh, I was a good player, but I didn't make others around me better. It wasn't until my 5th year that I began to do that. I enlisted the help of my friend and fellow 5th year player who would tell me when I was not playing within the flow of the team. He made me concentrate on putting others in situations where they could succeed. This might mean making sure you make a good soft throw to a younger player. Setting up a dump cut early, or not trying the hard break, but rather trusting others to be able to take 2 more passes to score. Most importantly for me, it was trusting my teammates to play good D and not try to play everyone's D for them.

It's the little things that develop trust. It can be as simple as looking a teammate in the eye in big games letting them know that you believe in them and the team. Most of it, however, is done not at tournaments, but in the car-rides to tourneys, track workouts, lifting sessions, and most importantly, practices.

Your goal for every practice should be to make your teammates better in every drill, every sprint, and every scrimmage. If you play your hardest, most physical D on a player, you are going to push them to get better. Likewise, on Offense, if you make it your goal to punish whoever is covering you by making hard real cuts, they are going to learn how to play better and better D. Challenge them to get better. Set the bar higher and higher for them each practice, and through these battles, you will get better by them pushing you to do the same.

Look your teammates in the eyes at the end of practice. Look at them with the pride of knowing that you pushed them and they, in turn, pushed back. By the end of the season, when you look them in the eye, you will also see the complete trust in knowing that no other team is going to push as hard as you pushed each other. That is a wonderful and unstoppable feeling.

-josh

Handler Cuts

I am not very good at throwing, but I am an adequate handler. I make up for my throwing shortcomings by moving well when I don't have the disc (that isn't to say that I don't actively work on making my throws better). There are basically two types of handlers - ones that handle by moving the disc around the field using their legs, and then there are the types that move the disc around the field with their throws. Watch a club game sometime, and you will see what I mean. The throwing handlers seem to get more comfortable and in control the longer they hold the disc (they also give more possessional dumps since they get field position by throwing), and the ones who use their legs rely on catching the disc in a spot on the field that puts them in an aggressive position to release the disc quickly before the mark gets there, and then moving to receive it again.

Ideally, a handler should be able to do both. One of the hardest things I had to learn when I started playing club was dumping since my college team never played with a dump (our captain was a volleyball player who we just floated a throw up high to the breakside when we got in trouble and he came down with it).

At first, the motion seems very strange, and hard to throw to, but after a while, once I learned to recognize the different dump patterns and worked on throwing to space, I begin to realize the merits of dumping. For starters, a properly executed dump cut is pretty much unguardable as long as the throw is out to space. This allows for easy resets and even more important, if a dumping system is properly integrated into the teams system, it is a predictable and dependable way to gain more advantageous field positions and help take take the force side advantage away from the defense.

It might just be that I am a handler now, but I feel the dump cut is the most powerful cut you can do in ultimate. If done correctly, it is the backbone of all club level offenses, and done incorrectly, it can lead to soft turnovers and breaks.

Below is a slide showing the various different dump movements and cuts. Read them, understand them, and we will be incorporating most into our offense this year.

-josh

Sphere of Influence

I don't remember much from high school, let alone history. But I do remember about spheres of influence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_of_influence#Post-Imperial_China . I always thought it was an odd term because although countries had "influence" they definitely didn't have spheres.

Anyway, one day when I was coaching lehigh about dumping, we kept having downfield cutters cut into the dump area. Finally, I came up with a concrete visual that I think helped people realize the handler area and the cutter area.

Picture the field with the thrower trapped on the sideline, now imagine him with a 10-15 yard sphere around him. This is the dumps area. The dump has a 10 yard sphere of influence around the thrower. Cutters, generally, 99% of the time, should NEVER invade this sphere.

This 10 yard sphere exists around the thrower at all areas on the field. Let the dump be able to get to the dump. Leave those 5-8 yards in front of the thrower open for the dump to get it upline in the power position. This is a great position to huck from, and everyone loves to score goals.

Maybe i will draw a picture sometime..... probably not.

-josh

Handler Area

Click on the picture to enlarge and read up a little. I stole this slide from Geoff Buhl (with his permission). He was the coach of Rutgers when I was at lehigh. Rutgers was not very athletic, but Geoff managed to eek every ounce of athleticism and ultimate IQ of these guys to make a run to sunday of regionals every year.

Anyway, basically what we did well 2 years ago was that the handlers and the cutters understood what part of the field was for handler motion, and what part of the field was for big cuts. This lead to cutters setting up for large in and out cuts, and the handlers working to get easy throws off by using their legs.

I am going to post another post on handler cutting.

-josh

On Improvisation (i suck at spelling)

I hate the concept of "plays" as in, player 1 does this, player 2 does this, we throw to player 3. I feel as a team, we are very robotic and don't do a good job of reacting to stimuli (i.e. making minor adjustments offensively or defensively in a game. This is especially evident when we play teams that throw shitty, bladey hucks, or playing against teams that poach or play a clammy defense).

In the past, we have gone over flow drills and split the game down into the small parts (various dumps, etc.), and we have even had plays. But, when we call them plays, i feel people don't realize that the best plays are really just patterns or situations that arise depending on your situation on the field. Also, I feel it teaches people to not throw to the OPEN man, but rather the man they think they should throw to.

Most college teams in the Northeast have coaches. Most of those coaches really know their x's and o's. They might have slightly varying O structures, dumps, defenses, but, for the most part, they are mostly based on the same fundamentals: throw the disc out to space, cut to get the disc AND make space, on defense take away the option the cutter wants, make the thrower break you with their 2nd best break throw when marking.

A good college team will execute their team's system well, a great college team will know how to improvise within a system when their first and second options are shut down. I am not talking about flashy scoobers and stall 9 blades (although every throw has it's place somewhere for a certain situation); I am more talking about, if someone is poached, where should he go, if they are back marking the thrower, how should he react, should our dumps change, and, if people are throwing bladey flick hucks on us, how should we defend differently.

I feel last year a lot of the freshmen and sophomores were good at playing D against MIT (squirrely handlers cutting upline, big cutters who jack it to other big cutters out of the ho stack). We were not good at playing against hippie ultimate.... no real stack and big throws. We also gave up 2 breaks every time a zone was put on us because our handlers would either miscommunicate and have a soft drop, or the handlers couldn't figure out if the cup was loose or tight and how to attack each one.

This stuff takes time to learn, and playing against colleges of all sizes and playing styles gives you much more experience than a watered down O line of MIT. This is why I have been pushing for you guys to play in as many tourneys as possible. I cannot teach you guys to play against every type of zone out there. We barely have enough time to learn how to run 1 effective zone. It is only through playing against different teams that you will begin to see the different patterns of O's and D's and then learn how to make adjustments on the fly about how to counter them. This is what I have been hinting at all season about the veterans learning pattern recognition.

Anyway, you guys are playing WPI tonight. They have 2 good players I know of, and both of them like to throw deep and run deep. I am assuming you will have a zone thrown against you and on offense they will run some sort of ho stack and throw it deep a lot with outside/ins. Be prepared to counter this by starting the game off dictating your man under. If they are going to score, make them score with 30 in cuts. If they do it the first time, make them do it 3 more times, I promise you that they will get frustrated and jack it deep the first second they think their man has a 50/50 shot at it.

no more mr. roboto, from now on, react to stimuli!
-josh